HPLC

High-performance liquid chromatography (formerly referred to as high-pressure liquid chromatography), HPLC, is a chromatographic technique used to separate the components in a mixture, to identify each component, and to quantify each component. HPLC is considered an instrumental technique of analytical chemistry (as opposed to a gravimetric technique). In general, the method involves a liquid sample being passed over a solid adsorbent material packed into a column using a flow of liquid solvent. Each analyte in the sample interacts slightly differently with the adsorbent material, thus retarding the flow of the analytes. If the interaction is weak, the analytes flow off the column in a short amount of time, and if the interaction is strong, then the elution time is long. HPLC has been used in medical (e.g. detecting vitamin D levels in blood serum), legal (e.g. detecting performance enhancement drugs in urine), research (e.g. separating the components of a complex biological sample, or of similar synthetic chemicals from each other), and manufacturing (e.g. during the production process of pharmaceutical and biological products).[1]
Chromatography can be described as a mass transfer process involving adsorption. HPLC relies on pumps to pass a pressurized liquid and a sample mixture through a column filled with a sorbent, leading to the separation of the sample components. The active component of the column, the sorbent, is typically a granular material made of solid particles (e.g.silica, polymers, etc.), 2–50 micrometers in size. The components of the sample mixture are separated from each other due to their different degrees of interaction with the sorbent particles. The pressurized liquid is typically a mixture of solvents (e.g. water, acetonitrile and/or methanol) and is referred to as a "mobile phase". Its composition and temperature plays a major role in the separation process by influencing the interactions taking place between sample components and